Daddy's Boston boy

This was too cute, just had to share.

4 weeks

I asked Justin to start taking prego photos of me to show my growth along the way. I'm mainly doing this for my mother, but it was kind of interesting to see with Logan. This shot is probably not too fair because Justin was sitting on the floor when he took it.

My friends at work with more than one child have told me that the second pregnancy seems to go MUCH faster. I hope so because it seemed like we waited forever for Logan to arrive. The last 24 hours especially. :-)

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes -- "new room"

It seems like whenever we make what we think is a major change with Logan, he handles it like it was old hat. For example, when he was about a year old, we took away all his binkies (pacifiers). We thought we would face nights on end of crying, but he hardly seemed to notice. The latest change was to move him to a big boy toddler bed and even to a new bedroom on the opposite side of the house. We took him to the store to help us pick out his bed and bedding. It was a couple weeks after that (last weekend) before we were able to get his new bedroom set up. Here is a pic of us introducing him to his "new room" on Sunday. ("Play, new room" is what he says.)

Sunday night we put him to bed in his new bed and new room for the first time. He climbed right in, laid down, and went to sleep. This is the same child who in recent weeks would usually bang his cup on the crib (not hard, just making noise) and jabber for 15-45 minutes before going to sleep. My mother said naps the past two days have gone just as well. Last night and tonight went great, too. Logan constantly amazes us.

Of course, one of the reasons for moving Logan was to make room for the new baby we were planning. We wanted Logan to be comfortable in his new room long before the baby comes, so he doesn't feel like the baby kicked him out of his room. It just so happened that we found out we were pregnant on the Friday before we moved him.

Next is potty training and we plan to try to start that this weekend...can we be so lucky again?

Red candy peanuts and corn

No, it's not a new recipe. It's relating something I did as a child to something Logan did tonight. My parents and probably my brother (if he remembers) will immediately know what I'm talking about.

BTW, if snot grosses you out, read no further.

When I was about three years old, as my mother tells me, I was eating red candy peanuts from a vending machine. She noticed red liquid coming out of my nose...turned out it wasn't a nosebleed; I had put one of the candy-coatede peanuts up my nose and the red coating was melting off. She had to take me either to the doctor or to the hospital to have it removed with big tweezers.

Tonight we were eating dinner...tacos/burritos and, yes, corn. Logan kept sticking his finger in his nose, which unfortunately is not an unusual thing, especially at his age. But he seemed more bothered about whatever was in his nose than he normally is. For some reason I thought to ask him if he had put a piece of corn in his nose, and he told me yes. Knowing that yes and/or nodding is his standard answer to most questions, I changed it up and asked if he had put taco meat in his nose. "No, corn, nose." So after he finished eating, I looked in his nose and thought I saw a piece of corn. Justin didn't fully believe me, but I got out the bulb syringe and tried to suck it out using that. Nothing but snot, and he really hates the bulb syringe, got really upset and started to cough like he was going to puke (he has done that before when he was really upset). So we went about our normal routine and gave him his bath. After his bath, I tried again with the bulb syringe on his changing table, but still no results. So while his Daddy was reading his bedtime stories, I called the doctor's answering service. They said to call back if I hadn't heard from the doc in 30 minutes. In the meantime, we put Logan to bed at his normal time. After 45 minutes, I called back because the doc hadn't called. She called soon after that; she suggested what has worked for some parents, which is to blow really hard in his mouth to try to blow it out. If that didn't work, she said if we could see it and hold him down, we could also try to get it out with tweezers. Failing that, we needed to take him to the emergency room because if we didn't get it out, he could get a sinus infection or some other bad problems. So I got dressed and ready to go to the ER, just in case. Justin and I went into his room; of course Logan had just gotten to sleep at that point (he usually takes 15-45 minutes to get to sleep at night). He sat in Justin's lap and I covered his mouth with mine and blew several times. No success, but Logan thought it was hilarious, so at least he wasn't freaking out. After several blows, the corn had appeared to make some momentum, but it wouldn't come all the way out. So we laid him on the floor and Justin held him down. I got the tweezers and tried to get ahold of the corn, but it was slippery and more snot had built up. Some tiny pieces of corn came out; I got the bulb syringe and did a couple more tries with that. Then I blew in his mouth again -- and the corn finally flew out! We think the tweezers must have dislodged it from where it had been stuck. Yeah! No ER trip. I was soooo dreading that...I just couldn't imagine how late it would have been when Logan got to bed after that.

So, needless to say, we'll be watching a little more closely for food (or whatever) being put where it doesn't belong. And hopefully Logan learned from it, too.

Happy Anniversary!

I think I neglected to write about our recent anniversary getaway. My mother offered to watch Logan while Justin and I went out of town to celebrate our 10th anniversary. I found a B&B in Sulphur, Oklahoma, that seemed to be a nice setting and had good reviews. Why Sulphur, OK? We (mostly Justin) wanted to visit the Toy and Action Figure Museum in Pauls Valley, which was on the way. So we left on a Saturday morning and got to Pauls Valley for lunch; we found a great little hometown pizza joint and shared a small pizza and fried mushrooms (we were trying to save some appetite for dinner at the B&B). On to the museum. It was pretty neat; one of those places where you would probably notice something different if you went back another time. There were a lot of toys and figures! We spent close to an hour there; unfortunately, they were out of postcards. On to Sulphur, and we arrived at the B&B earlier than anticipated. They didn't seem to mind and actually upgraded us to a better room for the same price. What a nice surprise! It was a chilly but beautiful day, so we went to the National Park that is located there and took a long walking tour of the springs, all by ourselves. On the way back, we even saw a deer run by! It was very pretty.

Dinner at the B&B was fairly pricey, but it included quite a bit. We had a drink that was champagne mixed with homemade peach nectar from home-grown peaches; garlic bread with homemade pesto; a three-course meal of shrimp scampi, filet mignon and fish (I've forgotten the exact type); and dessert, which was some kind of French dessert that tasted a lot like yellow cake with raspberry sauce and ice cream and a little chocolate sauce. I liked it but Justin doesn't usually do desserts and didn't have much of it.

Our room was elegant and cozy, but we could hear a lot of the activities of the couple upstairs (like getting into their jacuzzi tub). We just tried to ignore it. The view of the night sky from our balcony and all of the stars was incredible! I miss going to summer camp and seeing so many stars.

Breakfast was almost as good as dinner -- fresh fruit, choice of pancakes or waffles with homemade jams, Starbucks coffee, vegetarian chutney, and potatoes. Next time we visit, we plan to set up a spa treatment at the spa they have onsite. It looked like a nice place, too.